UK Jobless women total hits 22-year high November 17, 2010

Today’s Independent points out that, though jobless rates have (as ConDems are so keen to point out) recently fallen, the recent trend is opposite for women in the workforce, and set to get much worse.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “Female unemployment has been rising for over a year and hit a 22-year high this autumn.

“With the Office for Budget Responsibility predicting half a million further job losses in the female-dominated public sector, women look likely to suffer rising joblessness for some time to come.”

Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: “There are signs that cuts in public spending are already having an adverse impact on job prospects for women, with the unemployment rate for women now at 7% – higher than at any point since the start of the jobs recession in 2008.

“Women are likely to have been adversely affected by fewer vacancies in public administration, education, health and social work.

“The public sector, which has a relatively high concentration of female workers, is also the only sector to record an increase in redundancies in the latest quarter.”

Once again, THANKS, NICK. read more here.

How to Help? November 16, 2010

Jender’s Advice on Applying to Grad School post got me thinking. What ought staff/faculty do if they know that postgraduates are having trouble in their department?

 

If you know that women postgrads in your department are experiencing problems—with other members of staff; with other postgrads; etc—what do you do? Ought it be left to the postgrad(s) herself/themselves to decide what to do and to do it? How ought they be advised? Is it right to act on your own initiative? And if so, how and what and when?

 

I suspect that when women postgraduates have trouble in a department, how the department handles it* makes a big difference to how the experience impacts the postgraduates themselves; inaction, or wrong action, could make a bad situation worse, and could make a woman feel even more excluded, even if general sentiment is silently on her side.

 

What do you think?

 

*I am assuming that these things are generally known. Departments tend to have thick grapevines, even if those vines seem conveniently to disappear when tricky situations arise.

Why the Humanities Matter November 16, 2010

Sign it and share it.

Britain has a long-established and highly distinguished tradition of teaching and research in these fields, admired around the world. We cannot afford to throw it away. Everywhere in the world people are asking: what is Britain doing to its great Universities?

Assessing the APA November 15, 2010

Brian Leiter ran a poll about the APA; the results are not pretty.  He’s following up by asking for comments on what it is doing well and what changes should be made.  It looks like a good opportunity for recommending ways to improve a part of the profession!

Think Pink, Part One November 14, 2010

The NY Times tells us that Kay Thompson, the creator of Eloise and general entertainer, is the subject of a new biography.  She had a troubled but exciting and multi-faceted career from author to cabaret singer, movie actress and adviser to other stars.  In her time at least, she was considered magnetic.  In the film clip below, she is immersed in a culture most of us and are readers are happy is gone, and so her power may be hidden.  Nonetheless, the NY Times tries to explain it in this remarkable passage:

The things that made Thompson magnetic are difficult to get across, the society photographer Cecil Beaton observed in 1950. But Beaton’s description of Thompson is shrewder than most. “The facts about her are that she sings and prances in cabaret between Los Angeles and Istanbul; that she is skeletal, hatchet-faced, blonde and American; that she wears tight, tapering slacks and moves like a mountain goat,” he wrote. “The proper language in which to review her is not English at all but Esperanto. Or possibly Morse code.”

Why, we can wonder, did the NYT consider Beaton’s comments as shrewd, rather than shrewish?

In the clip below, Thompson is the fashion editor with the advice, “Think Pink.” 

 

The clip raises a lot of questions for me about that time.  One of them is whether pink was as omnipresent in girls’ culture as it is now.  Dim memory suggests not.  Another more vivid sense is the horror of the demeanor of these women being a very dominant model for women. 

What do you think?

Those violent protests? November 14, 2010

You’ve probably heard about the violent student protests in London last week. Some of us were there, and we can assure that most of the protesters were v. good-natured, and the violence was v. isolated (we saw nothing of it). But I also think there’s something to be said for this take on it:

Focusing on damage to buildings usefully distracts attention from the much more far-reaching and systematic violence now being visited upon our education system and society more widely. It is as if we are being asked to believe that reparable damage to windows matters more than the lasting decimation of the nation’s public property – schools, universities, public transport and hospitals; or that young people in search of social justice will undermine the fabric of Britain more viciously than those who would systematically degrade this country’s welfare system, employment prospects, wages and pensions.

The wilful infliction of injury on human beings is violent and must not be condoned. Hurling a fire extinguisher into a crowd is clearly wrong, but the broken glass and bonfires of Wednesday were more visually spectacular than actually harmful. It is the coalition’s policies that are going to generate bloody mayhem. Cancer patients endure violence as they wait longer for fewer tests. Those sleeping rough in the winter cold suffer violence. As for real destruction and vandalism, let us begin with our libraries, recreation services, public transport and school buildings. As some lecturers at Goldsmiths college in London have pointed out, the “real violence in this situation relates to the destructive impact of the cuts”.

The Sunday Cat goes scientific November 14, 2010

Felis Catus is now the subject of a serious scientific study reported in Science, the official magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  That means the data is thoroughly institutionalized and all!

See the discussion at the NYTimes, and view the video below.  It’s all about those precious little cat sips, which turn out to be precise and subtle exploitations of the physics of fluids.

From the NY Times:

Cats lap water so fast that the human eye cannot follow what is happening, which is why the trick had apparently escaped attention until now. With the use of high-speed photography, the neatness of the feline solution has been captured. …

Dog owners are familiar with the unseemly lapping noises that ensue when their thirsty pet meets a bowl of water. The dog is thrusting its tongue into the water, forming a crude cup with it and hauling the liquid back into the muzzle.

Cats, both big and little, are so much classier, according to new research by Pedro M. Reis and Roman Stocker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined by Sunghwan Jung of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Jeffrey M. Aristoff of Princeton.

Writing in the Thursday issue of Science, the four engineers report that the cat’s lapping method depends on its instinctive ability to calculate the point at which gravitational force would overcome inertia and cause the water to fall.

To some the classiness of cat will be a surprise.  Others have long suspect that cats are physicists.  What else would account their assured sense of superiority?  [JOKE!]

“They were clearly men – they were not wearing skirts.” November 13, 2010

From Old Reliable, BBC news…

A Lancashire council which introduced gingerbread people to its primary school lunch menus is to rename them gingerbread men.

Lancashire County Council said staff brought in the politically correct term two years ago to amuse people, but the joke had been “lost in translation”.

A spokesman said gingerbread men would appear on new menus soon.

Preston MP Mark Hendrick said he was pleased the council had “reverted to common sense”.

“I thought daft political correctness had gone out of the window but obviously it’s still out there,” the Labour MP added.

“They were clearly men – they were not wearing skirts.”

Explaining plagiarism? November 13, 2010

Pretty much all of us, I’d suspect, have to spend a bit of time telling students what plagiarism is so they’ll understand what they shouldn’t be doing. And it’s useful to have examples. So why not use Bush’s memoir?

Advice on applying to grad school? November 13, 2010

Reader K writes:

This is really out of self-interest (though I’m sure there are other readers who would also appreciate this), but I was hoping that since it’s application season, you might open up a thread on graduate school? It would be fantastic to hear from people who read this blog ideas for what programs are friendly to women in philosophy, what programs are good places for those whose areas of interest include feminist philosophy, etc. There are suggestions on pasts posts, but this can change over time with retirements/hires/etc.

Unfortunately, my philosophy professors who have been giving me advice fall into two categories: “I can’t believe affirmative action didn’t get you into a grad program last year” and “Why don’t you study X area of philosophy instead?” so I’m a little short on help in this area.

Query from a reader November 12, 2010

I am looking for films, movies or documentaries to show in my class next semester that illustrate the struggles that homosexuals have in American society. These can focus either (and) on individual struggles as a homosexual or on the struggles that same sex couples encounter.

In providing your response, I would greatly appreciate any additional information regarding the approximate length of the documentary and where I may be able to locate a copy.

Thank you in advance for your help : )

CFP: Discovery in the Social Sciences November 12, 2010

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
WORKSHOP: Discovery in the social sciences: Towards an empirically-informed philosophy of social science

University of Leuven, Belgium, March 22-23, 2011

Submission deadline for abstracts: 31 December, 2010.
Notification of acceptance: January 15, 2011.

Keynote speakers
Alison Wylie (University of Washington)
Jack Vromen (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Call for papers:
The aim of this workshop is to bring together scholars who are working in the philosophy of the social sciences, especially those interested in scientific practice. The theme is discovery in the social sciences.

We invite submissions of extended abstracts (about 1000 words), and we are especially eager to hear from young researchers, including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, tenure-track professors and other recent PhDs, working in the philosophy of the social sciences or related fields. We are interested in both case studies that examine specific instances of discovery in social sciences, and in more theoretical or methodological papers that are informed by scientific practice. We take ‘discovery’ in a broad sense, meaning discovery of empirical phenomena, theories and laws. ‘Social sciences’ refers to a broad range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) economics, anthropology, history, archaeology, psychology (including neuroscience), linguistics, and sociology.

Possible topics (*NOT an exhaustive list*) include:
- What is specific to discoveries in the social sciences?
- What is the epistemic role of artefacts in discovery, for example in neuroscientific research?
- Can we discern patterns in discovery in the social sciences?
- The discovery of laws in social sciences.
- Case-studies of discovery in specific social sciences.
- Creativity in social scientific practice.

Please send your abstract, preferably as pdf or rtf to Helen De Cruz, using the following e-mail address philosophy.social.sciences @ gmail.com (remove spaces) by December 31 2010. Please also indicate your position (e.g., graduate student, postdoc, assistant professor).

Scientific committee: Helen De Cruz (University of Leuven), Eric Schliesser (Ghent University), Farah Focquaert (Ghent University), Raymond Corbey (University of Leiden and Tilburg University).

This workshop is supported by funding from the University of Leuven and Ghent University.

UK benefit cuts and carers November 12, 2010

Laura Woodhouse at The F-Word nails it.

Secondly, what happens if an individual refuses a job because it does not fit in with their caring responsibilities? Or because the vast majority of their salary would be spent paying someone else to take over the care work they do, work that they could perform better themselves? People officially designated as full time carers and parents with children under five will not be subject to the three strikes rule, but parents with children over five will be. If a single mother refuses three jobs that would prevent her looking after her kids properly, the money she needs to feed those kids will be cut off. The government claims that advisers will be asked to “ensure that the requirements they place on a recipient are reasonable for that person, taking into account their particular capabilities and circumstances”, but with a culture of complete disdain for benefit claimants I hardly think we can guarantee this will happen.

Randeep Ramesh also raises important concerns

Women also find themselves apparently hit. The white paper makes it clear only one of the partners would receive the welfare payments. This means the child care component of the tax credit and the child element of the tax credit could end up in the pocket of the main earner, which many pressure groups say will be the man in a relationship. This would be a huge U-turn in policy – and the money is not trivial, with £100 a week at stake for bigger claims.

The headline to Ramesh’s article also nicely makes the point that claim that “people will receive more” only works if you take ‘people’ to mean men (a familiar sort of point for feminist philosophers).

Lesbian families ARE abnormal November 12, 2010

There isn’t any child abuse. Surely we must keep such people from adopting. How can children thrive in an environment like that?

“My Princess Boy” November 11, 2010

Cross-dressing for kiddies may even become fashionable.  What a good thing that would be!

 I was struck, since I had read our own elp’s post about her son, to see an almost identical story about a mother and son in Seattle. The story includes support from the school. And one result is a book about the family’s experiences with a ‘different’ boy:

The so-far self-published book is forthcoming from Simon and Shuster in December.   The web site says:

My Princess Boy is a nonfiction picture book about acceptance. With words and illustrations even the youngest of children can understand, My Princess Boy tells the tale of a 4-year-old boy who happily expresses his authentic** self by wearing dresses and enjoying “traditional girl” things like jewelry, sparkles or anything pink. The book is told from a mother’s point of view, sharing both positive and negative experiences the Princess Boy has with family, friends, classmates and even total strangers.

 The book is listed at Amazon as currently unavailable, but there is more about the author-mother here.  There is also a separate web site for the book, with links to other forums; you can contact the author if  you want.

See also Jender’s related post.

**On the West Coast things are especially authentic.

New Symposium on SGRP! November 11, 2010

From the SGRP blog:

Please note that the SGRP has posted its Spring 2010 symposium on Ladelle McWhorter’s book, Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy. Commentaries are by Alia Al-Saji (McGill University), Kathryn Gines (Penn State University), Shannon Sullivan (Penn State University), and William Wilkerson (UA Huntsville), with Ladelle McWhorter’s reply. Please have a look and post your comments!

For the symposium, go here.

Girls who aren’t breastfed have babies younger November 11, 2010

according to this study. Of course, whether one breastfeeds or not is strongly affected by one’s social circumstances and the norms around one. So it’s just remotedly possible that there might be a common cause of being breastfed and having babies later. They did apparently control for income and education, which is good. But it’s a study of women who were born in 1958, and my suspicion is that both breastfeeding and believing in delaying childbirth were pretty countercultural ideas in 1958, so I’d want to look into that as a common cause.

Also, one might wonder if what holds for women born in 1958 will hold for those born now. Nah, nothing much has changed, has it?
(Thanks, elp.)

Princess Hijab November 11, 2010

Parisian graffiti artist:

Recommendation letters and discrimination November 10, 2010

A study conducted by researchers at Rice University examined reference letters written for academics in support of job applications or job promotions. The study examined whether such letters reflected gender stereotypes, and if so, what the impact might be on job and promotion prospects. Unsurprisingly, they discovered that letter writers did employ gender schemas, and these were likely to have a negative impact on women’s careers. The researchers reviewed 624 letters of recommendation, written for 194 people who applied for junior positions at a US university. Letters of recommendation written for women tended to describe them in more ‘communal’ (social, emotive) terms, using words such as ‘affectionate’, ‘helpful’, ‘caring’, ‘sympathetic’ and ‘tactful’. Men were described in ‘agentic’ (assertive, active) terms, such as ‘confident’, ‘forceful’, ‘independent’, and ‘daring’. The researchers then anonymised all the letters, controlled for awards, publications, experience, and so on, and gave the letters to faculty to evaluate. The letters that described the applicant in more ‘communal’ terms consistently received more negative evaluations. In addition, letter writers tended to be more hesitant about women’s qualities – e.g., letter writers for women were more likely to say things like ‘I think she will probably make a good leader’, whilst letter writers for men tended to say things such as ‘He is an established leader’. If this phenomenon is widespread, and there is reason to suppose it is, then it amounts to a form of implicit discrimination – whilst there is no suggestion that letter writers or readers are consciously employing gender schemas/rating women more negatively, the net result is to disadvantage women applicants. A second study is planned, which will examine the same issues with respect to medical jobs. You can read a write-up of the study here.

Woman jailed for dropping rape charges November 9, 2010

From the BBC:

Rape charities have reacted angrily after a woman who accused her husband of rape was jailed for falsely dropping the charges.

The woman, from Powys, was given an eight-month sentence after changing her mind about pursuing prosecution.

Dyfed-Powys Police decided to investigate her for perverting the course of justice.

The End Violence Against Women Coalition said the verdict sent out a “chilling message” to rape victims.

Director Holly Dustin said it also showed parts of the criminal justice system are “still in the dark ages” when it comes to sexual violence.

And the charity Rape Crisis, which operates throughout England and Wales, said they were “outraged” a woman was being criminalised for choosing not to pursue her case.

Gosh, I wonder why the reporting rate is so low for rape.